Youth En Route and WCHS team up for bicycle initiative

By Nicholas Allen - for the Lethbridge Herald on May 6, 2022.

Herald photo by Nicholas Allen Knowlege and Employability teacher Myles Havinga instructs students as they attach the bike to a stand earlier this week at Winston Churchill High School.

A Calgary organization is helping Lethbridge high school students view biking as an option for going to school.
Winston Churchill High School is teaming up with Youth En Route to make biking easier to access for high school students.
Youth En Route is an organization out of Calgary that helps youth have a green, healthy choice to get to school while empowering them to make this choice. Executive Director and founder of Youth En Route, Laura Shutiak, developed the idea over the course of the pandemic and launched in fall of 2021.
“I’ve been involved in school councils and schools for a long time. Anyone who’s been on a parent council at a school will tell you that traffic issues around schools are notorious,” said Shutiak.
She saw these problems became more serious as the pandemic went on with a reduction in safe ways for kids to get to school.
“As a parent of teenagers, you really recognized how teenagers were impacted by the pandemic. The bus service went to almost nothing,” said Shutiak. “They still had to get to school, even though the bus service had been reduced.
After being involved for a long time in a parent volunteer role, she felt there was an opportunity to create something when COVID hit, as Shutiak was “Looking for something to do.”
Shutiak said she decided that high schools were where the organization was going to focus energy because they were being ignored and there would be opportunities to make a difference.
“I just sent out a package to pretty much every big urban high school in southern Alberta. There was a teacher at Winston Churchill High School and my package sort of landed on his desk and he said, ‘this is perfect. I want to do this’,” said Shutiak. “And that’s kind of how it started and now we’re continuing to move forward on it.”
The package landed in the hands of one of Winston Churchill’s Physical Education teachers, Aaron Becking, who got involved with Youth En Route to start working on getting biking and a bike maintenance program implemented at the school, according to Shutiak.
Knowledge and Employability teacher at Winston Churchill High School, Katie Nelson, who works with students that may have minor learning disabilities or delays in their learning, found inspiration from the Phys-Ed program.
“He was working with them for a class, and we also had an idea to do a biking unit with our kids to teach them basic bike maintenance. [To] teach them all of their core subjects through biking,” said Nelson. “The difference from Phys-Ed is that we’re also doing math, and we’re learning about circumference, speed and distance and then for science we’re talking about the body [while biking].”
She said for English class they are going to listen to podcasts about biking and different stories that have to do with biking. For social studies they are talking about why it was so hard to get a bike during the pandemic.
“We’re just trying to do the curriculum, but also teach them lots of skills for the workplace. We just kind of start where they’re at and we try to do more hands-on activities,” explained Nelson. “The employability piece is what’s really important to us to make sure that kids can have access to jobs after high school.”
Nelson said that being able to show students that all these subjects can tie into a simple bike ride is a straightforward way of showing them the connection between learning and their everyday lives.
“That’s what we’re doing and then because of Youth En Route’s involvement with our school, they were able to get us set up at the Lethbridge Bike Swap. Where we got a few bike donations,” added Nelson.
Even though some of the bikes were unusable, the school will hold onto them for parts.
“I’m super excited about Winston Churchill because they want to create a bike shop and have the kids work on bikes and then the school will have a fleet of bikes,” said Shutiak.
Shutiak said they are using donated bikes for the bike swap in Calgary to produce funds for Winston Churchill High School to acquire the tools and stands required for taking apart and fixing the bikes.
“We’re hoping that we can generate about a $1,000 and put [Winston Churchill High School] into business,” said Shutiak.
Even with the progress Youth En Route has made, Shutiak believes they are still at the stage of breaking down barriers. She said there are still too many issues that prevent kids from being able to try biking to school. Shutiak explained that kids may not have a bike or have no place to lock it if they do. Other barriers she mentioned include lack of a helmet or lock and not knowing the safest route to take.
“When you only see your city from the seat of a car, you don’t necessarily know those secret little routes that can make a lovely bike ride. But some kids are simply not aware of that being there,” said Shutiak.
Shutiak said that teaching them safe routes and making sure they are available is the biggest hurdle to face in getting kids to ride bikes to school. Shutiak also said she is excited about the future of Youth En Route in Lethbridge.
“We’re thrilled to have Winston Churchill as a partner,” said Shutiak. “We’re going to organize some professional development for the teachers so that they can get a little bit more expertise.”
For more information on Youth En Route and what they do, visit their website at youthenroute.ca.